Creating Analogue-Like Sounds With a DAW

The Basics

Anyone reading my most recent articles
has probably noticed my pull towards the analogization of the
digital. These articles revolve around effect plugins that attempt
to recreate the nonlinearities of analogue processing after
recording.

A huge aspect, however, of the analogue sound comes from
the nonlinearity and expression of the sound source. This can be
achieved in certain virtual synths and samplers through use of
modulation parameters and velocity layering, but can be exploited to
a much greater extent with creative MIDI programming if the DAW
supports it.

I use Logic, so will use it as the platform for
explanation of a way of doing so, but the general idea can be
implemented across all DAWs which support similar programming
capabilities.

The most basic synth in Logic is the ES M bass synth. It does have filter and volume modulation hard wired
to incoming velocity, but other than that it is fairly plain and a
great synth to use as an example for this technique.

In the images, immediately below, you can see I have instantiated an instance
of the ES M, created a basic MIDI region with varying velocities,
sent the signal to two different Logic distortion units and put a few
effects on the master to add some cohesion.

The MIDI region we will be working with showing the various velocity values.The mixer showing the two distortion models and mix processing.

Environmentally Conscious

Once this is set up, the next step is
to go into Logic's Environment by pressing the keys Command-8, create a new monitor, New
Menu > Monitor and patch it from the ES M channel to the monitor object
by clicking/dragging the small triangle in the upper right of the channel to
the monitor.

Press the space bar to play and you will see a number
of symbols and numbers populated in the monitor object. These
correspond to incoming MIDI data from the region I made on the ES M
track.

From left to right they are type (very hard to see), channel,
note and velocity outputs. From left to right the type is a black
note symbol, the channel is 1, the note is C1 and the velocity varies
from 0 to 127.

The MIDI output from the above region.

The next step is to create a new
transformer which is done by selecting the New menu and selecting
Transformer. Double click the Transformer to open it and you will
see basically two rows.

The top row asks what information the Transformer should look for and the bottom row asks what the Transformer should change that information to. In this case I want
the top row to look for note events on channel 1. The note and
velocity values can remain blank as I do not want to specify either
of those right now.

The bass amp and channel connected to the monitor. The monitor reveals the treble control information.

Now I want to figure out what the
first distortion unit responds to. Here I have selected the ES M to
monitor patch cable, deleted it, run a new patch from the upper right
triangle in the first distortion channel to the monitor and turned
the treble control of the distortion a little to gain information.

It is sending (again, a very hard to see) fader F value on channel
2 with a parameter value of 14 (the treble control) and the control
range varies from 0-127.

The fully programmed transformer.

The next step is to create a 0 filter
as MIDI always sends a note on (1-127) and off (0) signal which if
patched through will send the distortion control to 0 at the end of
the MIDI note.

The way to do this is fairly simple. Create a new
Transformer as described above, set the velocity to 0 (data byte 2)
and in the upper menu select filter matching events. Patch the
first Transformer into the 0 filter and the 0 filter into the
distortion channel. This will now create a modulated distortion
treble level based on velocity without sending the distortion control
to 0 when the note ends.

The programmed filter.

Distort & Randomize

It's sounding a bit more wild and
interesting so let me do it again. I went ahead and created a
second send channel with a different amp emulation and repeated the
steps above. I also did some final processing on the output to marry
the sends and the dry signal. I then want ahead and added a
randomizer to the end of each patch to add more variation to the
sound—a new transformer object with the output velocity set to ±10
randomization.

The splitter object in the image is simply a blank
transformer which is necessary in order to patch the signal to
multiple processors. I find the treble controls in these particular
plugins sounds the best in terms of modulation, but obviously you can
choose to modulate any control and any number of controls you wish.

The randomizer. The graph and subsequent output will randomly change with each incoming note.

Making Room

Finally, the sound can use some special
effects. I have chosen a reverb, but you can do this with any
type of effect or any effect chain you feel. I have gone
through the steps above to gain the necessary information from the
reverb time fader in order to create modulation of that parameter
according to velocity—create a larger sound as velocity increases.

I do not, however, want it to be exactly hardwired to incoming
velocity as larger velocity values will make it sound far too large.
In order to scale the reverb time down when incoming velocity is
high, I have chosen the division option for the second data byte and
chosen a value that sounded good. This graph represents incoming
values along the horizontal axis and what the corresponding output
values will be along the vertical axis.

The programmed reverb transformer. I've scaled the output to keep the reverb level moderate for all velocities.The final dual distortion and reverb patch.

Conclusion

This reverb trick creates a larger
sound according to incoming velocity while the treble modulation
creates a more distinct and harmonically rich sound according to
velocity which mirrors a real world performance on an organic
instrument—striking a snare more heavily would produce more
harmonics and more room information.

This is something which would
not happen in a number of analogue synths let alone plugins and is a
great way to subtly increase the performance and sound value of your
sound source. It can also be used in combination with analogue
synths or sounds if you were to make a blank copy MIDI track, no
plugin sound source, which mirrored any incoming analogue sound to
create modulated effects.

It is something I use often and hope you
can gain insight and new ideas from it as well.